SBNation.com User Blog: taggert.butler

My Utah Jazz Dream

taggert.butler — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 21:24:21 -0000

This isn't a dream scenario, or a dream for the future. I literally had a dream about the Utah Jazz, and it was pretty awesome. Kind of. I guess that's what I get for reading SLC Dunk right before bedtime!

So anyways, I was at a Jazz game, and we were getting killed. Towards the end of second half, I noticed that none of our younger players, the "Core Four" if you will, had seen the court at all. Not only were they sitting on the bench, we had started playing people who weren't even professional basketball players. Random guys, teenage girls, you name it! But no Core Four. Naturally I was furious, and I somehow had access to the team. I sat in on the halftime speech to the players, which happened to be in a trailer full of frozen Otter Pops, and spent the rest of halftime yelling at the coaches and any front office member I could find, telling them to play our young guys!

The lineup I proposed in my dream was Burks, Hayward, Millsap, Favors, and Kanter, with Al off the bench as an instant offense 6th man. So for whatever it's worth, this is the lineup I dream about!

Next thing I can remember, I was in the gym with Alec Burks. He was shooting 10ft set shots from the baseline and couldn't make a single one. I asked him, "What does Alec Burks do better than everyone else?" and he tole me "Jump." So I showed him how to shoot a jumpshot and he started draining them.

Unfortunately, my alarm went off during my gym time, but it was a really vivid and funny dream! Has anyone else ever had a Utah Jazz related dream?

The lineup I proposed in my dream was Burks, Hayward, Millsap, Favors, and Kanter, with Al off the bench as an instant offense 6th man. So for whatever it's worth, this is the lineup I dream about!

Unfortunately, my alarm went off during my gym time, but it was a really vivid and funny dream! Has anyone else ever had a Utah Jazz related dream?

Point Guard Option A: Free Agency

taggert.butler — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:04:00 -0000

It's no secret that one of the biggest reasons the Jazz struggled last year was due to their poor point guard play. With Mo Williams, Jamaal Tinsley, and Earl Watson all unrestricted free agents, the Jazz either need to: A) sign a point guard or B) draft one. Most likely they will do both. This post will cover Option A, the free agency route.

Now I know many on this site have clamored for our own Alec Burks to become the PGotF, or at least something along those lines. He did play a lot of backup point guard this year for out team. In fact there were a lot of things he did well and he brings a lot of unique skills to the table. However, looking at his body of work, I just don't think he is a point guard. He's averaged just over 1.2 assists per game in his career, his assist percentage is only 11.4%, and his A/TO ration is 1.2. So what? Compared with all 74 PG's or PG/SG's drafted in the first round since 2000 his assist percentage is second worst (only to Troy Bell), and his A/TO ratio is fourth worst (sandwiched in between the immortal Quincy Douby and Ben Gordon). Furthermore, when taking everything into account, I have him rated as the 56th best PG of 74, Comparable to Jimmer and Iman Shumpert. I love Alex Borqles, I really do, but I don't think he's a point guard going forward.

That being said, there are a few viable options on the market to fill a need on the Jazz, even if just for 2-3 seasons. I took the 20 possible free agent Point Guards for the 2013 class and compared them to see how they stack up. I also added Eric Bledsoe just for fun, even though I know he's not a free agent. Here is the final rankings, along with the scores they received.

So what does this mean?

Chris Paul is amazing. I mean amazing. The things he does year in and year out are superhuman. He rocks.
Outside of Paul, I think Calderon and Teague are the only guys I would start on my team. I could handle Darren Collison or Jarrett Jack at a bargain, but I wouldn't pay market value for B Jennings.
Mo Williams is not very good at basketball. This year he was comparable to DJ Augustin. DJ Augustin is not very good at basketball.
Tinsley was the best PG on our team last year.
Turnovers really bring Eric Bledsoe down on this list. His A/TO ratio last year was second to last and his assist percentage wasn't very good. I think with more experience and working in the Jazz system he could improve those immensely.
I would love to have Nate Robinson off the bench. He just scores so well despite his size and actually moves the ball better than most would expect. I wouldn't sign him to a big deal or start him, necessarily, but I think he's a good bargain as a backup.

How I did these rankings
This was a pretty grueling process, and it took a lot of raw information from basketball-reference.com (a.k.a. the best site ever). The score listed in the table above comes from a composite ranking of various statistics, some given by basketball-reference and some I came up with on my own.

Awesome Scoring Statistic (ASS)- PPG36*PPS = a good measure of how well someone scores. The more they produce and the more efficiently they do so, they higher the score. Earl Watson was the low score at 3.33 and Chris Paul was the highest at 25.23.
True Shooting Percentage (TS%)- a given statistic that is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account 2-point field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws.
Help Score (HS)- When looking at guards, rebounds are worth .75, assists worth 1.5, steals and blocks are 2 each, turnovers are -2, and fouls subtract 1. The total Help Score is standardized and extrapolated over 36 minutes to assess how much a guard adds to his team without scoring in a set period of court time.
Game Score (GS)- The sum of ASS and HS, this puts a number on the total impact of a player on a game of basketball. Interestingly, 3/5 of the GS is incredibly close to PER. Seriously, I noticed a trend, and if you multiply any given GS by .6 it is usually within .5 of their PER, often closer than that.
Player Efficiency Rating (PER)- a measure of per minute production standardized so that the league average is 15.
Assist Percentage (AST%)- the percentage of teammates field goals a player assisted while on the floor.
Assist/Turnover Ratio (A/TO)- pretty self explanatory. 2:1 is usually a good baseline for PG's.
Offensive Rating (ORtg)- an estimate of points produced per 100 possessions.
Defensive Rating (DRtg)- an estimate of points allowed per 100 possessions.
Player Rating (PRtg)- the difference between ORtg and DRtg.

To get the final score, I ranked every player from 1-21 on all of these statistics. 21 points were given to the best, and so on. All the scores were added up, except for ORtg, DRtg, and PRtg. Those stats can be greatly influenced by their team, so I took half points for those three stats in the final score. After tallying up the composite scores, they were ranked to get a look at who is available and what they can do.

If anyone wants to see the actual calculations or full statistics, let me know! I have a lot of information compiled.

So what does this mean?

Chris Paul is amazing. I mean amazing. The things he does year in and year out are superhuman. He rocks.
Outside of Paul, I think Calderon and Teague are the only guys I would start on my team. I could handle Darren Collison or Jarrett Jack at a bargain, but I wouldn't pay market value for B Jennings.
Mo Williams is not very good at basketball. This year he was comparable to DJ Augustin. DJ Augustin is not very good at basketball.
Tinsley was the best PG on our team last year.
Turnovers really bring Eric Bledsoe down on this list. His A/TO ratio last year was second to last and his assist percentage wasn't very good. I think with more experience and working in the Jazz system he could improve those immensely.
I would love to have Nate Robinson off the bench. He just scores so well despite his size and actually moves the ball better than most would expect. I wouldn't sign him to a big deal or start him, necessarily, but I think he's a good bargain as a backup.

Awesome Scoring Statistic (ASS)- PPG36*PPS = a good measure of how well someone scores. The more they produce and the more efficiently they do so, they higher the score. Earl Watson was the low score at 3.33 and Chris Paul was the highest at 25.23.
True Shooting Percentage (TS%)- a given statistic that is a measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account 2-point field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws.
Help Score (HS)- When looking at guards, rebounds are worth .75, assists worth 1.5, steals and blocks are 2 each, turnovers are -2, and fouls subtract 1. The total Help Score is standardized and extrapolated over 36 minutes to assess how much a guard adds to his team without scoring in a set period of court time.
Game Score (GS)- The sum of ASS and HS, this puts a number on the total impact of a player on a game of basketball. Interestingly, 3/5 of the GS is incredibly close to PER. Seriously, I noticed a trend, and if you multiply any given GS by .6 it is usually within .5 of their PER, often closer than that.
Player Efficiency Rating (PER)- a measure of per minute production standardized so that the league average is 15.
Assist Percentage (AST%)- the percentage of teammates field goals a player assisted while on the floor.
Assist/Turnover Ratio (A/TO)- pretty self explanatory. 2:1 is usually a good baseline for PG's.
Offensive Rating (ORtg)- an estimate of points produced per 100 possessions.
Defensive Rating (DRtg)- an estimate of points allowed per 100 possessions.
Player Rating (PRtg)- the difference between ORtg and DRtg.

If anyone wants to see the actual calculations or full statistics, let me know! I have a lot of information compiled.

What I've seen so far and what I think will happen

taggert.butler — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:40:30 -0000

Earlier today I read a post by Amar detailing preseason stats for Points Per Shot (PPS) and Points Per Game (PPG). While reading I had a brilliant thought. "What if I multiplied the two together to see how good of a scorer someone really is." Oh and i decided to call this metric my Awesome Shooting Score (ASS). Basically, if a player is an efficient shooter (ie. has a high PPS) but doesn't score much (lower PPG), or they score a lot (high PPG per 36 minutes) but aren't efficient about it (lower PPS) their ASS score won't be so great. Only someone who scores well and shoots efficiently would reflect well on the ASS metric. (I didn't include players who won't make the team)

As you can see from the chart we have had some good scoring this preseason, especially from the Williames (25.4 for Mo and 26.34 for Marvin), the UnderKanter (a whopping 29.98), and Kevin Murphy (36.38). Hayward (22.75) Millsap (23.17), and Alec Burks (23.68) have also done very well. Big Al (14.02) and Favors (14.69) have struggled a little, while Foye (11.27) and Tinsley (8.75) have been downright awful! Jeremy "Dunk" Evans (10.71) and Demarre (11.6) haven't been so hot either. This graph pretty much confirms what we already knew: We have 4 capable guard/wing scorers (sorry, Murphy won't get the minutes to help out much this year) and 4 big men who we expect to score well too. Al and Favors should be better than these numbers show while Kanter can't possibly (or can he?) quite keep this pace. Outside of those 8 players we're fairly limited on the offensive end (although I hope for everyone's sake Foye improves or gets benched). Any way you look at it we can hope for a dynamic and balanced offense.

Speaking of offensive balance I took the raw statistics for the preseason and prorated them to 36 MPG levels for each player. When looking at this graph remember that this comes from small sample size and significant differences can arise from different lineup combos as well as who is playing defense. But scoring is still scoring no matter who it's with or against, so I think it's still an interesting graph to look at. If needed we basically have 10 players who could score in double figures at any given time. I feel like most of these 36 MPG values pass the eye test, although I wouldn't count on Enes putting in 21.3 and we know Big Al is good for a lot more than 14.0. I think 18.4 might be slightly high for Gordon but I wouldn't be surprised if he grew into that kind of production. The values themselves aren't as important here as the fact that we clearly have a deep roster and lots of potential offensive production.

These are the stats from last year for the 10 rotation players on our roster. I used these stats, along with what we've seen so far in the preseason to project corresponding values for this season. I expect Coach Corbin to use these 10 players almost exclusively. If anyone gets injured or otherwise dropped from the rotation, they would be replaced by Murphy, Carroll, or Evans. They'd also get time in blowouts or if we have particularly bad foul trouble. As far as the Earl Watson situation goes, I think when he gets healthy either he or Tinsley will take over the backup PG spot. They also might split those minutes. Either way I don't really care because they are clearly not scorers and therefore not incredibly relevant to this analysis.

As you can see I think Mo and Tinsley will take a very slight decline in minutes while Gordon and Marvin will slightly increase theirs. I really see Paul being the one who has to give up significant minutes (possibly playing off the bench) to make way for Favors and ENES MUTHA@#$%!&# KANTER, but Al will drop a few minutes too. I really hope Burks sees a serious increase in playing time and from what I've seen from Foye I hope he takes a big hit. As far as the specifics go, I divided the 48 PG minutes between Mo (28), Tinsley/Watson (12), and Foye (8). 28 minutes is about what Mo got last year and a tiny bit more than Devin played for us. I think Foye will play a como guard and therefore use some of the "PG" dedicated minutes. Tinsley or Watson can take whatever is left. There are 96 minutes for wings and I'll divide them like this. Gordon (32) and Marvin (28) will be the main wings. Burks (20) will be the main backup with Foye (8) and Millsap (8) poaching a few away from their main positions. Gordon's split should end up around 24/8 for SG/SF. That's two more minutes overall than he had last season. Burks has shown his abilities and deserves an increase from 13.2. I am really liking Marvin and I see him getting a bit more time than last year. I would love for our big man split to go like this. Al (32), Favors (24), Millsap (20), and Kanter (20). Al had 34.3 last year so he'll have to sacrifice a bit for the good of the team. Favors, despite his inconsistent preseason, is on the verge of being a star and already provides excellent defense and energy. Kanter seems to have improved immensely and could be the most improved player in the NBA this year. Millsap, bless his heart, will have to give up post minutes in exchange for SF minutes to fit in. I would be in favor of trading him at the trade deadline if Kanter and Favors show they can excel.

I realize there is a lot going on in this graph so I'll try to sum it up and analyze it in a quick and easy to understand manner. I plotted the PPS scores for the preseason so far against values for all of last season and used those (plus my own guessing) to estimate values for this year. Looking at our starting 5 I like what I've seen from Mo and I expect him to be more motivated this year and shoot the ball a little better. He played second fiddle to CP3 in L.A. and it looks like he's prepared to have a bounce-back year. He does shoot a lot but he makes 3-pointers and is an elite free throw shooter. I think he'll post somewhere around 1.25 points per shot this year (up from 1.12). Gordon, if he continues to be aggressive and make 3's, should have a great PPS score (1.35) because he gets to the rim and makes free throws. This projection is only a modest upgrade from last year (1.33) where he came on strong at the end. Marvin has been incredible so far so I expect him to improve upon his 1.24 PPS to somewhere around 1.35. I can see Paul getting frustrated as his minutes decline and therefore being less efficient. I project him at slightly less than his PPS last year (1.23). Big Al is Big Al. He takes a lot of shots and doesn't get fouled much, but he's good at what he does. I see him hitting 1.15.

Off the bench Burks is a potent scorer and has shown it so far. I think he'll be somewhere in between last year and what he's shown this year, so i projected 1.30. Derrick Favors posted a 1.29 PPS last season and in the preseason so I think anything above 1.30 will be good for him. The UnderKanter wasn't so bad (1.28) according to PPS in 2012 and has been great so far (1.41) so I project him at 1.35. Randy Foye and Jamaal Tinsley both hovered around 1.0 PPS last year and haven't done much to show me they're going to improve.

In order to project PPG for this year I applied the exact same logic (using last season's numbers and preseason stats, along with eye tests and hope for improvement) to calculate estimated points per minute values for every rotation player. After multiplying those by what I projected for MPG and prorating it for an offense who scores 99.8 PPG (the same as last year) I got this graph. As you can see, Al leads the way (15.8) with less than he did last year. I think he'll be roughly as efficient but won't be as big as a focal point. Outside of him we have 4 very capable and fairly efficient scoring starters, headlined by G-Time (13.2). Mo and Marvin should score well (12.3/11.0) with Millsap taking a hit (12.1) due to less playing time and decreased efficiency. On the bench side of things Favors, Burks, and Kanter will do their part (9.5/8.8/8.6) with Foye and Tinsley (5.7/2.7) bringing up the rear. Keep in mind these numbers assume we score, as a team, exactly the same as last year. Based on the pace and play I've seen I think we should be better this year.

Tying this all together and bringing it back to my original metric (Awesome Shooting Score), here is what I project for ASS based on minutes, points, and efficiency. There's not a whole lot to say here that hasn't been said. But if you read all of this I thank you. GO JAZZ!

It's official: Home and home with Michigan starting in 2014

taggert.butler — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:20:28 -0000

According to a press release from the University, Utah has agreed to a home and home series with "the winningest program in college football history." http://utahutes.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/062712aaa.html

To me this series is a huge bonus and it really shows how much our program is growing. An opportunity to knock off Michigan in their own building in 2014 would be huge for us! Does anyone remember the 2008 trip to Michigan that ultimately spring-boarded what I consider to be the best season in Utah history? It may just be a coincidence but a similar win could put us in shouting distance of competing for a spot in the very first postseason playoff...

In addition to that, bringing Michigan into Rice Eccles for a Thursday season opener will certainly pack the stadium and the TV ratings. Can anyone think of a better way to start off a season than with a victory over highly ranked Michigan in front of a record crowd and on national television? Regardless, this game will probably be the first one I attend (or watch at all for that matter) after this season, so I am psyched to have this game as my reintroduction to Utah football and the real world again.

Post-Spring Updated Depth Chart Notes

taggert.butler — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:20:17 -0000

After looking over the newest depth chart I found a few interesting things:

Jon Hays is back as the OR to Travis Wilson at second string quarterback after being left off the depth chart.
Harvey Langi is listed as the backup to John White IV with Kelvin York.
Junior Salt is listed as a defensive tackle. There was some confusion over which side of the line he would play on.
Thretton Palamo is up to second string at the defensive end so it seems like he will be getting some solid playing time. With Fakahafua and Palamo we should have constant pressure coming from the left side.

I'm psyched for my first football season as a U student and being in the MUSS! Go Utes!

After looking over the newest depth chart I found a few interesting things:

Jon Hays is back as the OR to Travis Wilson at second string quarterback after being left off the depth chart.
Harvey Langi is listed as the backup to John White IV with Kelvin York.
Junior Salt is listed as a defensive tackle. There was some confusion over which side of the line he would play on.
Thretton Palamo is up to second string at the defensive end so it seems like he will be getting some solid playing time. With Fakahafua and Palamo we should have constant pressure coming from the left side.

I'm psyched for my first football season as a U student and being in the MUSS! Go Utes!